Subject
Re: Lolita as satire (1958 review from National Review)
From
Date
Body
"Satyr is a sort of Glass, wherein Beholders do generally discover every
body's Face but their Own; which is the chief Reason for that kind of
Reception it meets in the World, and that so very few are offended with
it."
-- J. Swift, The Battle of the Books
"Satire is a lesson, parody is a game."
-- V. Nabokov, Strong Opinions
With all due respect and gratitude to our author's son for sharing the
review below, doesn't it actually constitute a pretty classic example of
Kinbotean criticism, in which the literary work putatively in question
disappears beneath the aggressively asserted agenda of the critic? In
striving so mightily to characterize Nabokov as an outraged Swiftian
prophet for 20th-century America, doesn't Meyer seem more to be exposing
his own "revulsion and disgust" at the "dully equalizing relativism" of
his "society" than any such bile in the author of Lolita? (Has any
writer of genius ever been less motivated -- or "inspired," to use
Meyer's unlikely term -- by revulsion and disgust than the ecstatic
Nabokov?)
Any attentive reading of Lolita will certainly notice its frequent
satiric bite, but to hold up "A Modest Proposal" as an instructive or
illuminating precedent for Nabokov's novel is a bit like comparing a
bitter vitamin pill to a seven-course feast. They have some nutritional
value in common, but the former is designed merely to inject a bit of
health into the body while the latter will, in addition to sustaining
the body, feed the mind and soul.
Meyer's appropriation of Nabokov's book for his personal purposes
(moralizing ones, in this case) is hardly a rare occurrence, of course.
Probably most of us who teach or write about Nabokov have fallen prey to
this temptation at some time or other. A senior colleague once told the
story of a student who had divined his reasons for teaching Henry James
novels: talking about them gave the professor the chance to sound smart.
And who could deny that any pedagogical purchase on the dizzying
brilliance of Nabokov's work affords one frequent opportunity to sound
smart in one's own turn?
Be that as it may, Meyer's self-aggrandizing review offers the welcome
chance to re-consider the inexhaustibly complex and tantalizing question
of the morality of Lolita (not to mention of Nabokov's work as a whole).
If satire ultimately and always reduces to a mere lesson, then how do
we glean an ethos from the labyrinthine game of a Nabokovian parody?
How do we elevate playful, even gleeful self-consciousness -- the
revelation (among other things) that "reality is one of those words that
mean nothing without quotation marks" -- to the level of a moral system?
Brian Walter
****
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200604200600.asp
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
body's Face but their Own; which is the chief Reason for that kind of
Reception it meets in the World, and that so very few are offended with
it."
-- J. Swift, The Battle of the Books
"Satire is a lesson, parody is a game."
-- V. Nabokov, Strong Opinions
With all due respect and gratitude to our author's son for sharing the
review below, doesn't it actually constitute a pretty classic example of
Kinbotean criticism, in which the literary work putatively in question
disappears beneath the aggressively asserted agenda of the critic? In
striving so mightily to characterize Nabokov as an outraged Swiftian
prophet for 20th-century America, doesn't Meyer seem more to be exposing
his own "revulsion and disgust" at the "dully equalizing relativism" of
his "society" than any such bile in the author of Lolita? (Has any
writer of genius ever been less motivated -- or "inspired," to use
Meyer's unlikely term -- by revulsion and disgust than the ecstatic
Nabokov?)
Any attentive reading of Lolita will certainly notice its frequent
satiric bite, but to hold up "A Modest Proposal" as an instructive or
illuminating precedent for Nabokov's novel is a bit like comparing a
bitter vitamin pill to a seven-course feast. They have some nutritional
value in common, but the former is designed merely to inject a bit of
health into the body while the latter will, in addition to sustaining
the body, feed the mind and soul.
Meyer's appropriation of Nabokov's book for his personal purposes
(moralizing ones, in this case) is hardly a rare occurrence, of course.
Probably most of us who teach or write about Nabokov have fallen prey to
this temptation at some time or other. A senior colleague once told the
story of a student who had divined his reasons for teaching Henry James
novels: talking about them gave the professor the chance to sound smart.
And who could deny that any pedagogical purchase on the dizzying
brilliance of Nabokov's work affords one frequent opportunity to sound
smart in one's own turn?
Be that as it may, Meyer's self-aggrandizing review offers the welcome
chance to re-consider the inexhaustibly complex and tantalizing question
of the morality of Lolita (not to mention of Nabokov's work as a whole).
If satire ultimately and always reduces to a mere lesson, then how do
we glean an ethos from the labyrinthine game of a Nabokovian parody?
How do we elevate playful, even gleeful self-consciousness -- the
revelation (among other things) that "reality is one of those words that
mean nothing without quotation marks" -- to the level of a moral system?
Brian Walter
****
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200604200600.asp
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm